


Port

by Anonymous033



Series: Port [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Mild Sexual Content, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 18:59:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3866125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous033/pseuds/Anonymous033
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanting a threesome might just be a kink, but it’s become so much more than that, and she can’t pinpoint the moment it went from wanting sex to craving a relationship with both of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Port

**Author's Note:**

> AU starting from the end of 2x13 "Heir to the Demon."

It slips out when she’s at her most vulnerable.

Her most vulnerable is when Oliver has one hand on her breast and the other in between her legs. Sara doesn’t consider herself loose-lipped, not at all, but Oliver is the one friend she has known from childhood, and sex with him is safe in a way that proximity to anyone else wouldn’t be. So, when he asks her what she fantasizes about, she tells him before she can stop herself.

He keeps touching her then. That’s what they do: They fuck each other’s minds out because they know how many fears and demons they both have to forget, and they stop for nothing because stopping means thinking and thinking means disaster. They already have too much to think about. Their encounters, hard and messy, are the one place free of judgement because they both know they’re in it for themselves—not for each other. So, he continues fingering her and then he penetrates her and she gets off and he gets off … and only later, when they’re done and he’s holding her in a way he hasn’t before, does she speak up.

“Ollie, it can’t honestly be a surprise to you.”

“Felicity?” he asks quietly. “No, it’s not.”

“I have not—I haven’t hidden my attraction for her.”

“No, you haven’t,” he agrees.

“So, why are you even thinking about it?” She raises her body up on one elbow, tossing curls of her hair over her shoulder and then using that same hand to trace patterns into his chest. “It’s just a fantasy. I’m not gonna make a move on her or anythin’, if you’re worried about me cramping your style.”

His lips twitch as he casts her a whimsical look. “I’m _so_ not worried about that.”

“Oh, what, you don’t think I could get her if I wanted to?” she huffs, offended by the cockiness in his tone.

“Sara, you know she doesn’t swing that way, right?”

“Yeah.” Sara’s heart drops, even though he’s only confirming what she’s known all the while. “I know.”

And then she drops her head—lies back down, because she doesn’t want Oliver to see her face and know that somewhere deep inside she aches for someone to love her as much as Felicity seems to love him. Nyssa loved her. Loves her still, with a passion. But Nyssa is hard and brutal and as cold-hearted as she is hot-blooded, and Nyssa is the type of person Sara would die for, not spend her life with.

Sara doesn’t have anyone she could spend her life with.

It kills her a little inside.

_\-------------------------_

“So, I’ve been thinking,” he says a fortnight later.

Sara pauses in the middle of pulling on her shorts, looking warily over her shoulder at Oliver. “What?” she asks flatly.

“About Felicity.” He tilts his head at an awkward angle, eyeing her ass shamelessly even as she moves to cover it.

“Ollie, no,” she breathes out in a sigh.

“Why not? You said you wanted it.”

“And so do you.” She stands, reaching for her top and pulling it over her head. “I’m not stupid enough to think you’re doing this for me.”

“Well. It would benefit both of us, obviously.”

“And how would it benefit Felicity?” Sara challenges, moving to stand at his feet. “You said it yourself: She doesn’t swing this way. Even if she did … I mean, a threesome, Ollie? That’s not something you just walk up to someone and propose.”

He reaches out to her, beckoning; reluctantly, she stretches out her arms and pulls him up. He scoots forwards, thighs bracketing hers and hands moving up her forearms to clasp around her elbows, as if to stop her from running.

Sara doesn’t blame him.

She wants nothing but to escape from this conversation.

“I wouldn’t force her,” he chastises. “You know that, right? We wouldn’t force her.”

“God, Ollie, I _know,_ ” Sara snaps, rankled by the implication. “But even if that’s the case, how could you possibly think this wouldn’t destroy us? I don’t want her to feel like she might be initiated into kinky group sex each time she set foot into the lair.”

He raises his eyebrows. “I doubt she would feel that. Felicity’s more resilient than you think.”

“If _you_ actually thought that was true, you would have made your move on her already,” Sara retorts, deliberately hitting below the belt because his accusation stings. It might be true, but she’s trying: Trying to be friendlier to Felicity; trying to share more and be less of a threat to the other woman; and it cuts her deeply to be failing. “But let’s face it: This is your way of getting Felicity without _getting Felicity,_ and I’m gonna take the fall for it because I’m the one who admitted to thinking about her. Am I right?”

He drops her elbows like she’s burnt him.

“You’re an asshole, Ollie,” she presses on softly, belying her words with a kiss to his forehead. “If you weren’t the only person in the world who understood what I’d been through … I would have let you go by now.”

And then she turns and she leaves.

But not for long, she knows, because she doesn’t ever want to feel adrift again.

_\-------------------------_

Oliver stops bringing the topic up.

For a long time, things are okay: She continues to sleep with him, and they continue to work together in the Foundry, and Felicity continues to insist on being a one-woman command centre—until one time, Felicity screws up, and he yells at her before storming off.

The IT tech is left standing at her workstation; head bent, chest heaving, fingers digging into the metal table. She looks so upset that Sara’s heart actually aches. So, the assassin approaches her carefully and stands beside her.

“He didn’t mean it,” Sara tries. “Ollie says stupid things when he’s emotional.”

“Well, if _Ollie_ didn’t mean it,” Felicity mutters, her top lip curling into a sneer, and Sara instinctively recoils. Of all the people to snipe at her—

“I’m sorry,” Felicity blurts. “That was over the line. I’m sure you’re right. It’s just that ‘Ollie’ is a big boy, and he’s gonna have to ask me himself if he wants forgiveness.”

Sara frowns. “I’m not asking your forgiveness for him.”

“Then, what are you trying to say?” Felicity peers, lips pursed, at her. “Because don’t get me wrong; I love talking to you, but Oliver yelling at me is kinda a normal thing by now. Even Digg has given up interfering.”

“I was—” Sara flounders. “I was trying to make you feel better. But that was … not appropriate. I’m sorry.”

Felicity’s mouth forms such a perfect ‘o’ that it’s almost comical. Sara, still clad in her leather costume, masks her fruitless attempts to find pant pockets by hiding her hands behind her back and interlocking her fingers.

“I just meant,” she continues, clearing her throat, “that Ollie—Oliver—does the stupidest things sometimes, but he does care about you. That doesn’t mean you have to forgive him. But I don’t want you to doubt that … you do matter to him.”

She smiles encouragingly and nudges her shoulder into Felicity’s. And then she walks off, feeling like she’s laid her heart bare for all to see.

_\-------------------------_

Sara stops sleeping with Oliver after that.

It isn’t out of anger or some misplaced need for retribution on Felicity’s behalf, but because she sees what she’s doing to them. She’s tearing them apart, just like she had torn her family apart, and she can no longer pretend to be insensitive to how much Felicity yearns for things to go back to the way they were before Sara showed up.

So, she backs off and steps away, and Oliver and Felicity eventually forgive each other. She tries not to ache too much when she sees the fragile thing between them heal and grow and bloom once again.

Oliver asks Felicity out on a date one night. Sara doesn’t tell anyone that she feels a phantom ache in her chest every time she remembers that scene.

Felicity brings in a potted fern, ostensibly to brighten the place up, but Sara knows it’s really for Oliver. She tries not to let the thought get to her. It’s hard.

Whenever she walks in on them kissing, she thinks about running away for good.

But she doesn’t have anywhere to run to, save back to the League where no one apart from Nyssa would welcome her.

So, she stays the course and doesn’t crumble under the knowing looks Diggle gives her. She’s _Ta’er al-Sahfer._ She can handle absolutely anything.

Until one day when Felicity approaches her, a dazed look on the pretty blonde’s face, and says, “U-um, Oliver thinks you might have a crush on me?”

_\-------------------------_

Her heart leaps into her throat all at once. _Damn Oliver._ She has truly never made a secret of her attraction to Felicity, but it’s one thing to act as she feels and another thing to bring it to light; here, in the middle of the Foundry with her night-time persona stripped down and Felicity looking incredulously at her, is not how she ever wanted to have this conversation.

She never wanted to have this conversation.

But she swallows the lump in her throat and hopes her voice doesn’t crack when she says, “He wouldn’t be wrong.”

Felicity only continues staring dumbfounded at her.

Sara adds, “But I wouldn’t call it a crush. It’s … I don’t know, I like you. You’re nice. And cute.” And a litany of so many other things that Sara almost feels pressure on her chest from keeping it in, but she doesn’t share too much. “I … I didn’t realize you minded.”

Felicity shakes her head as if trying to get rid of water in her ears. “I don’t _mind,_ ” she reassures Sara. “Wait, I’m saying this wrong. No, I don’t mind. I don’t mean you have to stop liking me or anything—it’s just I never expected it. Or maybe I did, ‘cause you look at me funny sometimes, but y’know … lots of people look at me funny, and not all of them have a crush on me. So. We should probably talk about this?”

Sara shrugs. “We don’t have to. If you don’t want to.”

“But you look like someone kicked your puppy!” Felicity protests. “Which could never happen since you don’t _have_ a puppy, but you’re getting more and more withdrawn, and I’m worried that you’re feeling excluded. From Team Arrow, I mean—”

“I’m not a part of Team Arrow,” Sara says helplessly, because there are so many other things she can’t address.

“You can be if you want to be.” Felicity steps closer, and Sara resists the urge to back away. “You know that, right?”

Sara thinks she probably does. The thought doesn’t make her feel any better, because being part of such a small group means she sees everything that goes on in excruciating detail, and she doesn’t really want more of a front-row seat to Oliver and Felicity’s relationship. She doesn’t love Felicity, not like Oliver does, but she craves for herself the kind of understanding Felicity has for Oliver; she doesn’t love Oliver in the same way Felicity might, but she misses the intimate camaraderie she and Oliver had that he now shares with Felicity. It’s an unhealthy wanting, the kind that’s emptying her out rather than filling her up with warmth, and she doesn’t know how to tell Felicity that.

So, she smiles weakly and says, “Thank you.”

Of course, Felicity doesn’t let it go. “You don’t look any happier.”

When Sara doesn’t reply, Felicity takes yet another step. “Is it—is it me? Am I giving off anti-Sara vibes? Because that’s not my intention.”

“No,” Sara murmurs. “No, it’s not you.”

“Then what is it? I can’t do anything ‘bout it if—”

“It’s something I want that you can’t give,” Sara grits out. “So please, let it go.”

Felicity deflates before her at the harsh tone, and Sara hates herself a little. But the other blonde still stands her ground and asks in a small voice, “Is it _me?_ ”

Sara knows it’s not the vibes Felicity is asking about this time around.

But she can’t lie to Felicity, so she shoves a hand through her hair and turns her face away before giving in. “Yeah, it’s you. But it’s also Ollie, and I want—” _you both—_ “—what the two of you have, and it hurts that I—that I can’t have that for myself.” She licks her lips and blinks, hard. “I’m not expecting either of you to do anything about it. It’s—you both work well together, and I could never begrudge you that. You deserve it. It’s just that I—”

And she suddenly feels sick to her gut. Wanting a threesome might just be a kink, but it’s become so much more than that, and she can’t pinpoint the moment it went from wanting sex to craving a relationshipwith _both_ of them. She feels unforgivably ashamed of herself.

“Excuse me,” she says, her voice finally giving out. She brushes past Felicity and runs up the Foundry stairs, futilely hoping no one saw her tears.

Bursting out of the side door and into the fresh air, she sucks in a haggard breath and leans heavily against the side of the building. God, she’s a _failure._ She would have thought the League trained her better than that. But now that she’s back, she’s gone soft. She hurts and she _wants_ and she looks for solace in places that she shouldn’t. Her family, her friends—

She wants so much more than she will ever have to give, and the shame eats her up from the inside out.

_\-------------------------_

Oliver finds her working at the bar that night.

She rolls her eyes when she sees him. “Do you guys have nothing better to do than to talk about me?” she asks, putting on a strong front because he makes it easy, and she wants to _end_ the conversation once and for all.

“Actually, yes,” he contradicts her. “Felicity didn’t tell me anything you said. But we’re both worried about you, especially after that little running-off-crying trick you pulled this afternoon.”

“How kind,” Sara retorts dryly. “Look: Whatever’s going on between you two, I’ve made my peace with it. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Yeah, you looked damn peaceful ‘bout it.”

She slams the shaker she’s holding onto the glass counter in front of her. “What do you want from me, Ollie?” she demands. “I’m trying my best here. I have a job and I’m trying to make peace with my family and I haven’t _once_ fallen down during my _other_ job. Considering my track record—” she cuts herself off, gasping through the tightness in her throat. “Do you want me to walk away? Because there’s no place on Earth where a defected assassin would be welcomed with open arms, and I’m just _trying_ to make a home for myself where I could be accepted, even if I’m unhappy. Is it too much to ask for you to just let me stand in the corner and mope sometimes?”

He lays a hand over hers, undeterred. “Home is where you can be happy,” he tells her, and she is inexplicably filled with rage.

“Of course you would say that,” she spits bitterly. “You can afford to. And in the meantime, who do I have to look out for me?”

“You have us,” a mild voice says to the other side of her. She jumps and whirls around.

“F-Felicity,” she stutters. The woman before her isn’t looking at her, but giving a nod over her shoulder to the man behind her; Sara turns and watches as Oliver walks away. To make her feel less caged in, she guesses.

When she turns back, Felicity’s eyes are blue and wide and earnest upon hers. Sara picks up the shaker. “I gotta get back to work,” she says, her voice trembling. Felicity eases into the space beside her, gentle hands busy with concocting a drink. Sara thinks for a moment about chastising the bespectacled blonde for her liberties, but decides against it.

“I really haven’t told him anything,” Felicity begins, pausing in her narrative as Sara serves a customer and takes another’s order. “But I overheard the conversation you and he were having.”

“It’s not an invitation to feel bad for me,” Sara says quickly.

“I don’t feel bad for you.” Felicity scrunches up her nose adorably before admitting, “Okay, well … I do. But that’s not why I’m doing this. I feel bad for a lot of people a lot of the time, and if I did what I wanted to for everyone I felt bad for, then my home would be full of strays. One of which would be Oliver—because, have you _seen_ his puppy-dog eyes? But we’re not living together. That probably tells you something about my policy on feeling bad for people. I’m not an enabler. But I do believe in caring, and because I care about you, I think we could try this out.”

“And what is ‘this,’ exactly?”

Felicity hesitates. “You, me, Oliver—the three of us.”

Sara almost drops the glass she’s holding. Hurriedly, she thrusts it at the customer, who makes a face before flouncing off with the drink.

“Felicity,” she mumbles as she turns back to the woman beside her. “Think about what you’re saying for a second. Think about how it sounds like.”

“I know it’s a radical idea.” Felicity twists her lips. “But I’m not willing to give up Oliver. And neither are you, if I read what you said correctly. This way, I can see us making it work.”

Sara bites into her bottom lip, fighting back the detestably familiar sting she feels at the back of her eyes. “If this is a joke, it’s really not funny.”

“I’m not trying to be funny,” Felicity answers quietly. “Look, I’ve never tried this before, but I see your point about it being hard to find home somewhere else. Starling City’s your home. Your family’s here, and I’m pretty sure there isn’t another vigilante team in the city that you can just drop in and join. I don’t see why you shouldn’t get the chance to try and be happy where you are.”

“Why? Why would it even matter to you? You barely know me.”

“ _Yet,_ ” Felicity corrects. “But I see more than you think I do, and I see that you’re one of _us._ One of the group of misfits that forms Team Arrow—Digg not included, because he’s surprisingly level-headed for someone who runs around with a couple of masked heroes at night. My point is … I was lonely before Oliver came along and asked me to look into a bunch of _ridiculous_ stuff. I know what that loneliness feels like, and I wouldn’t want that for you.”

Against her will, Sara bristles. “I’m not the type of person to be pitied.”

“It’s not pity,” Felicity replies, a hint of irritation to her voice. “It’s—I don’t know what you want me to say, Sara. I can’t lie to you and tell you this idea occurred to me before today. But just because I’ve never thought about it before doesn’t mean I have a problem with it now.”

“Just because you don’t have a problem with it doesn’t mean you _want_ it,” Sara counters.

“But I do,” Felicity counters, and her voice is oddly solemn. “I do, just not in the same way as you—and that’s a ‘not yet,’ not a ‘never.’”

Sara’s heart skips a beat. “And if it turns out to be ‘never’?”

“I make no promises,” Felicity replies, “but neither can you. We know how this goes—we live by the moment, especially in our line of work. All I can say is, I’m willing to try this out if you are.”

Sara breathes out, ignoring the distant call of _Oy, bartender!_ “Right,” she murmurs. “What about Ollie?”

Felicity freezes, her eyes round behind her glasses. “I’m not doing this without him, if that’s what you’re asking,” she stammers. “I mean, don’t get me wrong: You are—you are enough. But I care too much about him to let him go. And … if it was just you and me, then it’d be the same situation all over again with a different player, and that’s too messy for us to get into. You don’t want that kind of atmosphere down in the Foundry.”

Sara’s memory flashes back to the time she had walked in on Felicity seated at the workstation, Oliver leaning against the table and tucking a lock of hair behind the IT tech’s ear, and she agrees without a doubt.

“I meant,” she corrects, “what does he think of such an idea?”

“We haven’t really talked about it,” Felicity hedges. “That’s not something you just … talk about. But when he mentioned your interest in me, he might have implied that the context it occurred in wasn’t purely … bidirectional. He seemed pretty okay with _that._ Honestly? I think this is a talk you and he need to have.”

“What? Why?” Sara protests.

“Because you guys have a lot of unresolved issues going on,” Felicity points out, “I can tell. Maybe it’s time you have it out.”

“W-well, can’t you come with me?” Sara fumbles, feeling her skin prickle with self-consciousness when Felicity huffs in laughter.

But then Felicity just says, “Sara, you’re the strongest woman I know,” and Sara feels something warm spread through her chest. “You kick ass on a daily basis. You protect the ones you love. You left the League of Assassins because you hated what they were doing to you. If anyone can have a talk with Oliver about wants and needs, it would be you.”

“Okay.” Sara nods, fighting back the tremulous feeling in her throat. “Okay.”

“ _Bitch!_ ” a voice snarls nearby them, breaking the moment. “ _I said I want my fucking drinks now!_ ”

Wearily, Sara turns to the man to take his order. She really, really hates that word, but it’s been too long a day to pick a fight, and she doesn’t want to lose the one job she can get.

When she turns away from the customer, she’s expecting Felicity to be gone, but instead the ponytailed woman is leaning casually against the far counter, sipping whatever concoction she’s mixed and watching Sara work.

It makes Sara’s stomach flutter weirdly.

_\-------------------------_

Felicity stays with her until the end of her shift.

It’s usually after that she would head down into the Foundry and get briefed on what she missed before suiting up to patrol, but tonight, Felicity simply gives her a nod in the direction of the door and settles on a barstool.

_I will wait for you here._

Sara’s thankful for the support, even if it be from a distance.

She lets the Foundry door slam as she traipses down the stairs, and Oliver glances up from where he’s doing push-ups on the training mats.

“Hey, Digg, can you give us a minute?” he calls across the Foundry.

Diggle, sentient as he is, simply gives her a knowing smile and passes by her without a word.

“I guess you’re going to say, ‘I told you so,’” she says to Oliver once Diggle has left.

Oliver chuckles and rolls into a squatting position. It’s deliberate, she knows—it leaves her standing over him. But a man like Oliver doesn’t give up his dominance easily, and she appreciates the gesture, even if it’s unnecessary and she knows it’s only temporary.

“Surprises you every time,” he says. Sara thinks of the woman upstairs, sitting on a barstool waiting for them to ‘have it out.’

“Yeah,” she agrees softly. “When I brought it up with you, though … it was just a sexual fantasy.”

He nods.

She licks her lips and continues, “Felicity’s suggesting … a relationship. You know that, right?”

He nods again. “I guessed as much when she said, ‘You have us.’”

“Does that bother you?”

Oliver stares at her for a few long seconds before turning the question around on her. “Is it something you think you want?”

“Yes,” she confesses. She _wants._ She wants it so badly. “But I—she’s _your girl,_ Ollie. More than knowing I never had a chance with her, I never tried because she was the one good thing you had going and I never wanted to take away from that. I never wanted to take you away from her, either. I still don’t. And … if you think that doing this would be just too bizarre, then we won’t. I won’t. I can walk away.”

She watches, trepidation in her heart, as Oliver sighs. “Honestly?” he asks. “I wouldn’t have told Felicity if I minded.”

It isn’t much of an answer at all.

Sara furrows her brow. “Why did you tell her in the first place? I guess I can be grateful for it now, but … you had no way of knowing how she would react, and it wasn’t your secret to tell. It could’ve been disastrous.”

“I’ve known Felicity for the helluva lot longer than you have,” he reminds her gently. “And one thing she never does is walk away from the people she cares about. She was very worried about you. She came to me with that worry, and I didn’t think you could get any more miserable than you already were, so I told her.”

“Oh,” Sara answers insipidly.

“Sara, I’ve known _you_ for even longer. I’ve known it was about more than the sexual attraction for weeks now.”

“Oh,” she breathes out for the second time, letting her shoulders drop. She feels _exhausted._ All that holding back, all the fighting her guilt and shame and loneliness and jealousy and resentment—it was for _nothing._

Oliver rises, pulling her close and tucking her head under his chin. “So, come home,” is all he says, and then he presses a kiss into her hair.

Sara sinks into him and finally gives in to her tears.

_\-------------------------_

When she regains her senses, she leaves Oliver downstairs and heads back into the club to find Felicity and Diggle talking animatedly at the bar. They both look up as she nears them; at the jerk of her head, they slip down from their stools and go to her.

“Everything okay?” Diggle says, asking without quite asking.

Sara smiles gratefully up at him. “Perfect.”

He returns her smile and nods approvingly before moving away, giving her and Felicity some privacy.

Felicity doesn’t make a big production of it.

She simply grins adorably and catches hold of Sara’s hand and drags her in the direction of the Foundry, not letting go until they have to go down the stairs in single file.

“‘Kay, go practice fighting with them or something while I look for bad guys for us to beat up,” she tells Sara at the bottom of the steps, attention already diverted to the computers.

Sara watches Felicity sit down at the workstation.

And then, Sara moves into the lair and picks up her staff.

“You and me—let’s go,” she tells Diggle and Oliver.

* * *

Crossposted to: [Tumblr](http://anonymous033.tumblr.com/post/112641570812/port-a-smoaking-canarrow-one-shot-characters)


End file.
